Best GQ Book of the Year

OK, we're biased. But you don't have to take it from us. Publisher's Weekly called Jeanne Marie Laskas's Hidden America “sharply delineated, fully fleshed, and enormously affecting.” Oprah, USA Today, and a bunch of other listers said it was one of the best books of a very literary fall. A collection of stories published in our pages and elsewhere, Hidden America is about the people who make this country work: coal miners, air traffic controllers, roughnecks, cowboys. So who better to talk to Jeanne Marie about her work than Fox Business's Lou Dobbs, outspoken proponent of American labor (among other things). Spoiler alert: One chapter focuses on a gun mega-store in Yuma, Arizona, and, you guessed it, Dobbs has some strong feelings about it. Laskas profiled Dobbs in the May 2010 issue of GQ, so the tables here have turned—though it's still not always clear who's interviewing who.

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Lou Dobbs: Why do people who work with their hands fascinate you so much?
Jeanne Marie Laskas: I'm fascinated with people who are ignored or misunderstood. All we know is the stereotype, and we can't see what's underneath. So, for example, we might have this very broad stroke understanding of what a coal miner is: He's some pathetic guy who's stuck under a mine. A loser.

Lou Dobbs: Is that your sense—that they're losers—or do you think that's the sense of others?
Jeanne Marie Laskas: In the example of coal miners, the only time we hear about these people is when there's an accident, and there it is on the news. A CNN reporter at the time said, "Why do we even have coal mines?' As if to say, "What are those people doing down there? Aren't we done with this?' That woke me up. There are coal miners where I live. So how do I not know these people? They're my neighbors.

Lou Dobbs: In our society, we're fascinated by those who make so much money. When real people, to me, are the most compelling because they're so much more deserving, through their sacrifice and hard work, of our respect.
Don't you get sick of hearing about people who are in power and make all the money? Either they're at the top of their game, or they're falling, or they're rich and famous because of something dumb. We hear those same stories over and over again. There's this whole cast of characters under the radar, and I'm interested in them. And I even hate using the term "them.'

Lou Dobbs: Well, there is a divide, isn't there? There is a divide between the so-called elites, and those who you chronicle, who are the foundation of the country and who make it work. But plain seems to have more staying power, and more reason to stay.
You know why? Because everyone underneath it all is plain. So that's where we all connect to everybody. You are the coal miner. You are the air traffic controller, up there landing planes. There's a piece of you there. All of us can imagine being in Alaska, completely alone and in the dark, where it's 45 degrees below. You know, that's a story about isolation, and madness—and the human dance between the two.

Lou Dobbs: In the context of the politics, is one party or the other compelling and closer to the real men and women who work in these workaday jobs?
I would have to really strain to make the case that one party is closer than the other. I believe that Democrats think they're closer.

Lou Dobbs: One of the things that's common among all of these folks is that they live in a world where there is scarcity—of money, of time. But I'm not convinced that constraint is an immense negative in their lives, because often times the ability to extend reach, time, and distance for those of us who are privileged, is often wasted.
Jeanne Marie Laskas: The mythology is that every American wants to be rich and famous. There's an awful lot of people who have no interest in fame and celebrity, like the real cowboys. They don't want to be a movie cowboy; they want to be a real cowboy, and they want it to be forever. People think that those who do hard physical labor are miserable, and I didn't see that at all. You can take the extreme example of these people up on the North Slope of Alaska, drilling for oil. If anyone's going to be miserable, those guys are going to be. They said to me plainly, "Stop acting like we're prisoners. We're not sentenced here, we choose to be here.'

Lou Dobbs: Do you think that choice looms large in what you style as "The Gun Culture?'
Jeanne Marie Laskas: It's less a matter of choice than culture—people growing up, or assimilating into, a culture of owning guns or not owning guns. It's so strong that once you're assimilated into the culture, you can't even see the other side. It goes both ways. One world so does not understand the other. The gun people told me that my people, the non-gun people, are so stupid and scary. And I kept saying, "That's so weird, because we think you guys are stupid and scary.'

Lou Dobbs: It's a little slice, if you will, of that barrier between the left and the right. Both with seemingly perfect perception of the other.
Jeanne Marie Laskas: I wish you would figure this one out for me.

Lou Dobbs: I think there's a straight line, from those cowboys to that gun culture, to a heritage that people in this country feel, every day, is threatened.
Jeanne Marie Laskas: You didn't grow up in a gun culture, did you?

Lou Dobbs: Sure I did. I was born in Texas, raised in Idaho. I was on my own horse when I was five years old. This is part of the world, and the threat—
Jeanne Marie Laskas: But can you imagine if you grew up—and you probably can't, but let's just try for a second—that you grew up in an inner city, and all the kids around you are getting shot. You're growing up in that kind of gun culture. That's also an American story, and you could have that threat. Do you see?

Lou Dobbs: Anyone who had lived in such violence as in, say, the south side of Chicago, without being armed, is a damn fool.
Jeanne Marie Laskas: And in America, if we would just make guns accessible to everyone, that's going to be a significant step to cleaning all this up?

Lou Dobbs: No, no. I think what you ought to do is continue to let people be shot dead in the streets. I think you should continue to allow gangs to run rampant. I think you should continue to allow cheap-ass, little politicians like Rahm Emmanuel demagogue every issue in the world, and basically keep delivering cold bodies on slabs and say that he's a progressive. I think that's what you should do...Now you've tricked me into talking. I'm an interrogator.
Jeanne Marie Laskas: OK, while I'm at it: One question. Are we seeing Lou 2016?

Lou Dobbs: Oh my god, no. No, no, no. They asked, they talked, they did everything. I told them I wasn't qualified, and they said "Your not being qualified is what makes you qualified.' Once you enter that solipsistic universe of bullshit, nothing matters.
Jeanne Marie Laskas: When you were watching the primary debates between those people, tell me you weren't thinking, "What the hell, why am I not in there?'

Lou Dobbs: I guarantee you that what I was thinking was "Why the hell are these fools in there? When I tell you I am having great fun, enjoying myself, in the arena, I mean precisely that. And with people I respect for crying out loud. Politics, aside, though, did you feel better about the country, about the future, after you met the folks in your book? Were you glad you spent the time with them than a bunch of effete intellectual iconoclasts?
Jeanne Marie Laskas: I felt more connected to America in a way that I hadn't been before. I felt less like a spoiled brat. I felt like I knew where stuff came from. I felt optimistic about America because people want to work. People love to work. Americans are workers; give them something to do and they'll do it. It's immensely satisfying to work without having some larger goal of being famous. The work itself is rewarding to a lot of folks, and that rings true with my life.